My Heart Stood Still by Lynn Kurland (best book club books of all time .TXT) 📕

wall there, probably seven feet tall, but he knew it wasn't part of the outer defenses. It seemed to enclose some kind of space, and he could see from where he stood that the area was filled with a riot of flowers.

He walked under the arched entrance, then found himself unable to proceed further. It was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen. The garden was huge, and he supposed that in times past it might have included a small training area or perhaps stables and other buildings necessary to the running of a medieval keep.

Now all it contained were flowers. Thomas could hardly take in the scope of what he saw. Not that he was much of a horticulturalist. He knew some of the plants around his house—such as that uncomfortable familiarity with the rhododendron outside his front door—but past a few rosebushes and pansies, he'd couldn't put a name to much.

It probably would have taken him a month of poring through reference books to have looked up everything he saw. The flowers bloomed madly, riotously, and unnaturally, given the time of year. Those realizations passed through his mind, but he didn't stop to consider them. All he knew was that the castle had to have one hell of a gardener to produce this kind of beauty at this time of year. The flowers he held in his hand were simply weeds in comparison.

And then he saw her.

She was sitting alone on a stone bench placed against the wall. As before, her stillness reached out and touched him. And as it did, he understood how quickly and heedlessly he tramped through life. Though he didn't consider his pace unusual, he certainly pushed hard when he needed to. Even climbing mountains, he usually made a quick business of it. Rarely did he linger at his summits.

But to sit and be still?

With her?

It was overwhelmingly tempting.

He started down the path toward her, trying out different kinds of apologies and wondering which would be the most effective. He could dazzle her with semantics, excuse himself with a dozen clever explanations, bowl her over with enough justifications to weary a judge. But would it make a difference?

She sat still, her hands in her lap, dirt on her dress and on her fingers. Her hair was pulled back in a braid, and it fell over her shoulder in a fat, heavy tail. Thomas cleared his throat as quietly as possible, but she looked up just the same.

And the flowers in the garden disappeared.

Thomas looked to his right and gasped. Nothing but dirt and stone. He looked back at the woman. She brushed her hands off on her gown.

But she said nothing.

Thomas could scarcely put two words together. He gestured helplessly toward the former garden.

She merely looked at him.

"But," he managed, "it was so ... so incredible."

She still didn't offer any comment. The only thing that he found even marginally reassuring was that she wasn't weeping anymore. Maybe she wasn't wearing an exactly welcoming look, but she wasn't weeping, and he'd take that any day. He held out his flowers.

Well, weeds.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She didn't move.

He tried again. "I'm very sorry."

"About what?"

"About what I said the other day."

"Yesterday?"

"Yes. Yesterday. I went too far."

"Did you?"

He wondered if she was torturing him on purpose. "Yes," he said firmly. "I did. And I'm sorry."

She looked at him appraisingly. "Are you?"

He suppressed a sigh. "Do you always answer a question with another question?"

She looked down at her hands thoughtfully. "It gives away fewer answers that way, I suppose."

"I'll give you that," he said. He held out his flowers again. "This is my peace offering. It doesn't compare ..." He gestured toward the dirt and rocks. "But it's the best I could do."

She stared at the flowers for several moments, then looked up at him. "Thank you."

He waited. And he waited a bit more, but she made no move to take his flowers.

"They're yours," he said finally.

"Aye, I understood that."

He wondered if he could survive a year living in the same place with this woman without her wearing what patience he had down to nothing. He smiled briefly.

"You're supposed to take them."

"And how is it you suggest I do that?" she asked, looking at him solemnly. "With hands that cannot hold them? With arms that have not the strength to lift them?"

Thomas found, for the second time in as many days, that he had absolutely nothing to say. Obviously, there were some things he was going to have to figure out. But he'd never had dealings with a ghost before, so he could hardly be blamed for a few faux pas. With any luck, by the time he'd figured it out, he wouldn't have completely destroyed any possibility of a relationship with her.

He set the flowers down on the bench next to her, finding himself very relieved that the bench was actually of a temporal nature.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't think."

She folded her hands in her lap and leaned her head back against the wall. Thomas wanted to believe that she had almost smiled, but that was probably wishful thinking. He cleared his throat.

"Could I sit next to you?"

She shrugged. "If you like."

Damn, there went his palms again. How was it possible that a grown man of thirty-four very well-lived years could be such a geek around a woman who wasn't even real?

But she looked real.

And since sitting seemed preferable to falling, and he suspected that if he thought about his present circumstances any longer he would probably fall down from the complete improbability of them, he sat.

He stared out over the dirt. He burned with questions he hardly dared ask. But a coward he wasn't, so he plunged ahead.

"Will you tell me your name?" he asked.

She looked him full in the face. The full force of her gaze made him light-headed.

"My name is mine," she said quietly.

Fair enough. He tried another tack.

"Where were you born?"

"You're determined enough, aren't you?"

"What do you think?"

She sighed and looked away. "I